Current telecommunications networks can supply a variety of telecommunications services to customers via a Multi-Service Access Node (MSAN). Such a MSAN can provide services such as Plain Old Telephone Services (POTS), Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) or Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) lines. These services are supplied via customer subscriber lines which are typically copper cables connected to a customer Main Distribution Frame (MDF), The customer MDF is usually located in a service box in the street near to the customer's premises. The MSAN is connected to a provider MDF which is also located in the service box. To supply a particular telecommunications service to a customer the service provider must make connections between the customer MDF and the provider MDF. Such connections are typically made manually by a service engineer who must visit the service box and make the connections. New connections are required to be made each time a new service is provided to a customer or an existing service is changed. The problem is to manage physical copper wiring connections between services available to the customers and big number of customers. The problem is even more acute when, as indicated above, new customer must be added or new service, or when old customer wants to change his service package or to terminate one or more. All these require visit of the field engineer at the service box. Having regard to the huge number of such service boxes deployed in the field servicing of them and maintaining high responsiveness to customers' requests is expensive and time consuming task.
The cost of making the connections has two main components. The first is the fixed cost of providing the equipment to make the connection. The second is the overhead cost associated with the requirement for the service engineer to visit the service box and make the connection. Service providers aim to minimise both of these costs.
The overhead cost can be reduced by waiting until there are several connections to be made at the service box at the same time. This has the drawback that a customer may have to wait for the service to be connected. Alternatively service providers can minimise the overhead cost by including a cross connect between the customer MDF and the provider MDF which allows automated connects to be made from a remote location. The known cross connects used for such automated provisioning are either a cross bar or a Clos network. Whereas a cross bar is non-blocking a Clos network can be either blocking, non-blocking or non-blocking after reconfiguration.
One problem associated with the cross bar and the Clos network is the initial cost of purchase which increasing the fixed costs. This is particularly the case with a cross bar which becomes increasingly expensive as the number of cross bars increases due to the square relationship between the number of cross bars and the number of cross points. A further problem associated with the cross bar and the Clos network is the waste of resources due to the over provisioning of full non-blocking functionality. Typically about 5-10% of customer connections are changed per year, which means that 90-95% of connections remain unchanged. The provision of full non-blocking functionality therefore represents a waste of resources, which increases the fixed costs for providing new services to customers.
Another solution known in the art is the one defined in US patent application US2002/0101972A1. However apparatus and method as in the invention now to be described are neither disclosed nor suggested in the prior art document.
Hence, an improved apparatus and method of switching-in new connections and switching-out obsolete connections would be advantageous and in particular one that allows for performing the operations without or with significantly reduced the need for service engineer making the connections in the service box deployed in the field.